It is too bare, too vast. And though there is no frost, though every
second bush you see in summer is crimson fuchsia full of blossoms, yet
winter must be of a terrible loneliness. But the Donegal that I was
brought up in--Donegal of more inhabited and habitable shores by Lough
Swilly and Sheephaven and Mulroy--does seem to me a place not for
summer visitants only. However, this book concerns itself with summer,
and nowhere is summer more delightful. Of course it rains often, and
sometimes hard. "Did it rain ony wi' ye?" "It didna tak time to rain;
it just cam doun buckets," is a fragment of descriptive dialogue. But
take the country as I saw it in mid-July, when London was stewing
on a griddle of asphalt and flags, and when English country was all
one monotonous deadened green with heavy haze dimming the blueness.
Out at Bunlin, beyond Milford, all was green too; I looked from the
steep road across a glen breast-deep in bracken, with the curve of
Cratlagh wood beyond, and nearer me trim fields of green oats and
turnips. There was beauty of line there in Mulroy with its score of
scattered islands, in the hills, not very high, but very mountainous,
bold, and jagged, falling from the peak of Lough Salt to the glen, and
to the Mulroy water, crest by crest, sharp to the last little rocky
hillock. There was beauty of colour too, for the green of the bracken
was broken by silvery grey stone, with glint of mica in it, showing
up through the fern, and crowned or set about with purple cushions
of heath, here and there a foxglove adding another and a brighter
purple. There was wonderful beauty of detail in the wooding nestled
into the hills--wild growth, scrub oak, light, feathery ash and
birch, with the gleam of silvery stems, Scotch fir and larch--planted
trees, yet falling naturally into forestation which had none of the
heaviness, the citizen look of elm and sycamore. All was light, hardy
and strong--not a wilderness, but a cared-for country where the eye
wandered over a fair expanse of varied beauty, lying there in full
summer without summer's drowsiness or blowsiness. Lightness, airiness,
was the note of it all--light air, breath of bog-myrtle across the
salt of the sea; and even the decent homely people, lacking the graces
of Cork and Kerry, had yet in their motion and in their eye just the
dash of wildness which marks the Celtic strain.
[Illustration: THE ENTRANCE TO MULROY BAY, DONEGAL]
Next day was Donegal all over--fresh breeze, clouds driving swiftly,
and then bright sun, lighting up a lovely blueness. We were out on
small lakes up among the hills, two of us who fancied ourselves not
a little as fishermen, and got no encouragement for that faith; but
after all what could be pleasanter, airier, or more resting and more
bracing at once? and how good one's lunch is on the stones by a reedy
shore! I had to go back to London, and the car took me to Rathmullen
on the Swilly shore; and when the little steamer put out from the pier
it seemed to me that of these lovely loughs this is after all the
most beautiful. All was grey and green in the westering light; the
hills on the Inishowen shore opposite showed softer than the crags by
Mulroy. They were green now, with the olive green of young heather; in
another month they would be glowing purple. The lough as we crossed it
was a great round lake throwing arms west and south-west to Ramelton
and Letterkenny, beyond which all was bathed in a sunny haze. As we
ran farther out, the western mountains of Inishowen came in sight,
then suddenly beyond Dunree the sea gap opened, letting the eye out
to limitless ocean; and soon the sheer crag of the Binn of Fanad was
disclosed flanking that portal on the west. Looking back to the shore
we left, the Devil's Backbone writhed sinister and jagged along the
crest of the Knockalla range behind Rathmullen; and away to the west
in the sun haze, accustomed eyes could make out the faint shapes of
Errigal and Dooish.
History was all about us, evident in actual landmarks. On the hills
which divide the lough from Derry stood out boldly the ring of stone,
the great circular fort, which was the Grianan of Aileach, chief
seat of the northern Hy Niall, whose kinsfolk reigned in Tara. Here
Patrick preached about 450 A.D., baptized Eoghan, founder of
the great Tyrone clan, the O'Neills. Here, in a later age, came an
O'Brien of Thomond, one of Brian Boru's earliest successors, to avenge
a raid of these Northerners on Clare, and the stones of Aileach were
carried away to be built into the cathedral at Limerick. Over at
Rathmullen is the beach from which the boy Hugh O'Donnell was rowed
out to see the English ship which lay at anchor, offering hospitality
with black treachery behind; for the crew cut their cables while the
young chief and his company were below seeing the vessel's stores, and
sailed off with the prisoner so dishonourably made, to the Castle of
Dublin, where Hugh lay for years immured, captured but not submissive;
attempting escape after escape with unfailing heart till at last he
got loose, and after bare deliverance from death in the snow-covered
hills was free to exact a reckoning for the wrongs he had suffered.
On a low hill beyond Inch Island rises the square town of Birt, which
has memories of another chief, Cahir O'Dogherty, lord of Inishowen.
Cahir was fostered by the M'Devitts of Birt, and when Red Hugh claimed
lordship over Inishowen, the M'Devitts sought English protection
for their foster-brother and got it. The O'Dogherty became the
Englishmen's ally and helped to pronounce forfeiture on O'Donnell and
O'Neill after the two great earls took their flight in 1607--setting
out from this same ill-omened port of Rathmullen. But a new governor
of Derry arrived, quarrelled with Cahir O'Dogherty and struck him.
The blow was dearly paid for. Cahir went back to Birt, called out
the M'Devitts, and sacked and burnt Derry. But the Irish power had
been broken beyond retrieving when the earls fled, and O'Dogherty was
soon a mere outlaw on his keeping. They ran him to earth finally by
Doon Well, near Kilmacrenan, where he was shot dead in the encounter.
Doon Well is famous to-day, but I doubt if many there remember Cahir
O'Dogherty's fate, or even that on the Rock of Doon took place the
installation of each O'Donnell prince. What is remembered is the
sanctity of the holy well, whose water still draws thousands of
pilgrims and still works miracles of healing.
History more modern is in view at Lough Swilly, for here the English
fleet brought in their prizes after the action with Bonaparte in 1798,
and brought more than they knew, for they had captured Theobald Wolfe
Tone, the most dangerous enemy to England that Ireland had in those
or perhaps any other days. To-day there is a strong guard on Lough
Swilly. Dunree--_Dun Riogh_--means the King's Fort and the king has
his fort there, of the most modern type, commanding the entrance to
this great haven, with an armament very unlike that of the martello
towers which are dotted about, marking another of England's recurring
scares--the scare of the "French colonels" under the lesser Napoleon.
All these things came into my mind as I sat on the beach by Fahan and
watched the colour fade out and new colour take its place--masses
of dark green where there had been shimmers of grey and blue. Other
memories came there too--less historical: it was there that somewhere
in the 'seventies I had my first sight of a real railway train.
I carry away from Lough Swilly my earliest as well as my latest
impression of pleasant, beautiful Ulster, enhanced by a grateful
thought of the dinner which Mrs. MacMahon provided for one about to
take a long night journey. And whoever leaves the north of Ireland
with such impressions on his mind will have no cause to quarrel with
the close of his holiday.
Yet it is not well to depart leaving unexplored the mountainous
peninsula of Inishowen which separates Lough Swilly from Lough Foyle.
This great ridge of land is dominated by the graceful shape of Slieve
Snacht ("Snow Mountain"), a model of what mountains should be: bold
and peaked, yet with swelling curves that balance on either flank,
it fills the centre of a distance more impressively than far loftier
hills.
Inishowen was owned by the O'Doghertys, a clan who, tossed between
Tyrone and Tirconnell, had at least great staying power, for the
saying is--you cannot beat a bush in Inishowen without "rising" an
O'Dogherty. Their castles remain, and at Green Castle, on Lough
Foyle, is the work of greater men, Norman-planned, Richard de Burgo's
fortress. Many traces, too, of a far older period are to be seen.
At Carrowmore, not far from Culdaff, is a "souterrain" with five
chambers--a great mansion, in short, for these burrowers. Rivers and
lakes, too, are there with fair fishing, though I believe that a
certain old professor in Derry has skimmed the cream of it all in his
learned leisure, any time this fifty years. But the Castle River at
Buncrana is a fine salmon stream still, and the links there constitute
an attraction for very capable golfers--though not equal to those at
Port Salon on the opposite shore. In a word, if you cannot get to the
west of Lough Swilly you may be very well content with the east of it;
and though much of infinite beauty and interest lies beyond, when you
have seen and known Lough Swilly and its shores, and the people who
live on them--that mixed race, Scot and Irish, lowland and highland,
Protestant and Catholic, all neighbourly together--why, at least you
will have had a very fair chance to know and love, not the Ulster that
people rant about or rail at, but Ulster as it really is.
PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN
_At the Villafield Press, Glasgow, Scotland_
Transcriber's Notes
The Table of Contents has been added for convenience.
Illustrations have been moved to paragraph breaks.
Page 34: Replaced the oe ligature with oe in the two instances of
"Phoenix."